New Game Looks To Crack Mobile Fashion World

‍‍October 30, 2013 - כו חשון תשעד By Heather Norris

The fashion industry is in for a technological upgrade, and Ohad Greenshpan is leading the charge.

Greenshpan is a co-founder of a new app that connects consumers to merchandisers via Serious Games, which was launched by Fashioholic, a gaming company based in New York City and Tel Aviv that deals exclusively with fashion.

The Israeli company launched its first game, Fashion Eye, in August. Fashion Eye allows users to compare real merchandise and compete against themselves or other players in trivia based on the prices of items.

Greenshpan said he has seen user activity steadily skyrocket over the past two months, even surpassing downloads for popular apps such as Groupon.

While his company has declared the United States as its target market, he said he has been pleasantly surprised to see its success elsewhere. Within a week of the game’s launch, Greenshpan said, it had reached a No. 2 ranking for downloads in Belgium.

“We knew we wanted to develop games for women,” said Greenshpan, explaining that he and co-founder Amit Manna saw a gap where nobody was really making mobile games designed specifically for the mature female audience.

The decision to focus their game on fashion felt natural to the pair, since both games and fashion are very aesthetic, said Greenshpan. Fashion, he said, is “a big data problem.”

With styles changing every few months, the content must also change. For this, the company brought in a graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology to have total control over the fashion side of things, said Greenshpan.

What makes the game unique, and profitable to the Fashioholic team, is the relationship it has with the fashion industry. Instead of simply taking generic photos of jeans or jewelry, all of the items featured in Fashion Eye are real, and users have the option of selecting the item to add to a “luv it” list so that they can purchase the item directly from the merchandiser later. Additionally, the technology of the game is designed to “learn” the user’spreferences based on her activity and provide content suited to each player.

When a woman downloads and plays Fashion Eye, said Greenshpan, “she has fun, and on the way we adapt the content to her style.”